Food Bank of the Rockies truck driver Cardell Frank pulls up to the receiving dock of the King Soopers near South Tower Road and East Hampden Avenue in Aurora.

In the food storage area, most pallets are loaded with goods coming into the store. But in the walk-in freezer, Frank finds one loaded with packages of meat that have reached their “use or freeze by” date.

He loads 341 pounds of frozen meat onto the truck at this store and another 333 pounds at a couple of other nearby King Soopers stores.

The food pickup, called Denver’s Table Food Rescue, collected 4.2 million pounds of food last year and is one of a dozen programs at the Food Bank, which serves about 1,100 hunger-relief programs in the northern half of Colorado from Utah to Kansas, and in Wyoming. The Food Bank has applied for Season to Share funding.

Last year, the organization distributed about 36 million pounds of food, enough for its participating agencies to provide 76,000 meals a day to children, seniors, families and individuals, said Food Bank president and chief executive Kevin Seggelke.

Food Bank projects include a Kids Cafe, which serves meals to children in some of metro Denver’s poorest communities, and two programs that distribute commodities supplied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At the Food Bank’s large office and food storage and distribution complex near Interstate 70 and Havana Street, Chris Ross and her daughter Shannon, of Harvest Christian Community Church in Wheat Ridge, recently were loading their Toyota pickup with perishable and nonperishable goods for Harvest Christian’s twice-a-month food distribution.

Chris Ross, a church deacon, especially appreciates the opportunity to get frozen meat products for those dependent on her program.

“It’s really been a blessing,” Ross said of the Food Bank.

At the neighboring truck bay, the Rev. Pamela Frierson and her associates from Aurora’s Heart for the World Christian Center were loading their vehicle with goods for the church’s holiday food-basket distributions to the needy.

Frierson estimated the Thanksgiving giveaway served more than 800 families and the church’s planned Christmas food distribution Saturday will benefit up to 5,000 families.

Tough economic times have meant the need for her church’s assistance has “doubled or tripled,” she said. “We give ’til it’s gone.”

Frierson also praises the Food Bank: “It is an awesome resource.”

Seggelke said his organization has a paid staff of 74, but the Food Bank’s more than 6,000 volunteers are “the engine that makes it go.”

Last month, 21 volunteers from the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures spent a weekday there packing food boxes for those in need.

Yolanda Gonzales also was volunteering at the Food Bank, as part of the Arapahoe/Douglas Works program that provides her food stamps.

She values the experience: “You get to network and know you’re helping out the community.”

The University of Colorado leadership is grappling with how to address a nationwide nosedive in the favorability of higher education — particularly, among conservatives — as CU’s own representatives and decision-makers disagree on what’s behind the downturn.